The Vuelta reached a stunning climax as Horner and Nibali swapped jerseys for a couple of days, each leading each other by a margin of three seconds either way. Rodriguez took the stage win on Friday, climbing him back into some sort of contention, while Horner eased ahead of his Italian rival.
Saturday was the decisive stage as the race smashed up the Alto de L'Angliru with a profile over 20% at times, and the French continued their recovery in Grand Tours with a win for an emotional Kenny Elissonde. Behind him the drama was played out as Nibali attacked again and again to try and break Horner. The 41 year old American seemed to have the measure of him and as Nibali finally cracked he attacked, pushing on up into second place and taking over 20 seconds again. With just the largely ceremonial last stage into Madrid to go this made Horner well on track to be the oldest Grand Tour winner in history.
Sunday was a classic end of Tour day with nothing dramatically changing in the GC and a bit of a sprint day for the fast guys. Michael Matthews took the win for Orica and Australia, but the day was all about Horner. There are plenty of questions around, perhaps not exactly laid to rest by the American's style in interviews where he trumpets his love for the sport while not exactly addressing the doping question put to him. He stands as the oldest ever Grand Tour winner and has a place in history.
Sunday was also the start of the Tour of Britain in Peebles, where some of the biggest names in cycling rolled out of the Border town into the rain to start a race that Wiggins has to be favourite to win overall. A break went out as expected and the work began to reel it back in, then a solo attempt from Delaplace with about 40km to go jumped off. He was never likely to stay out as the peloton dragged him back, aiming for a sprint finish. Dowsett put a dig in with 12km left but his former team mates at Sky brought him back under control and everything came back together with a couple of crashes making the difference as Elia Viviani took the win for Cannondale.
With the focus on Wiggins again there was news that he was actually annoyed about the issues that seemed to everyone to exist between him and Chris Froome on the 2012 Tour de France. I have to say this doesn't exactly seem like news, and serves only to promote a book by Yates, a member of the Sky set-up who still appears to respect Lance Armstrong.
Off road there was the small case of the penultimate round of the downhill world cup in Hajfell, Norway. Dry practice made way for a sodden and windy race day on a course which saw feet out all over the place, and riders sliding out right left and centre. Rachel Atherton dominated the women's race and took yet another win that defines her as the best out there by some way this year.
In the men's race early fast times came form Andrew Neethling, with Steve Peat putting in a great performance to sit in second. It was wet expert Danny Hart who would be first to break this time and take the hot seat with one of the best rides we've seen from him in a while. Steve Smith's run was next to heat things up in the pouring rain and put him on the hotseat, doing all he had to to take away Gee's chance to wrap the series up this weekend. Mick Hannah over jumped a big step down and went off track over the top of a berm that had threatened to feature all day, leaving just Gee Atherton to aim for the win.
Gee started with great form but knocked off line he then managed to ride into a tree dropping his time dramatically. Steve Smith took the win and Gee was racing for points, coming in 12th and setting up the final race as a real decider, It's all going to be to race for with 17 points only between Gee and Steve as they head to Leogang.
There was bad news from the world of trials as we heard that Martyn Ashton has seriously injured his back during work on the follow-up film to the Road Bike Party edit that blew the world away last year. I wish him all the best to recover and bring more trails madness to our screens.
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